1.12 has been branched! I've done a rough nrelease build with HEAD
but haven't tested that a nrelease build with 1.12 produces the
correct
version information yet. Other then that it went pretty smoothly.

What I'd like to see for the release is that it ships with a kernel
where USB is completely disabled (I mean as an addition to GENERIC).

Otherwise it's just unusable on my laptop :(
Or is there a boot sysctl to disable USB completely?

Have you tried to boot without any USB devices attached ???
That helps me in some cases.

Yes, I tried it. No USB devices attached. But it hangs! Maybe there are
some internal USB devices like fingerprint-sensor. But I disabled USB
from the BIOS. But that makes no difference (kernel panics). The
only way I can boot is to disable USB completely.